{"id":4857,"date":"2013-06-24T22:19:45","date_gmt":"2013-06-25T06:19:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/legendsrevealed.com\/entertainment\/?p=4857"},"modified":"2015-08-20T01:09:51","modified_gmt":"2015-08-20T09:09:51","slug":"did-carol-reed-hire-anton-karas-to-do-the-soundtrack-of-the-third-man-based-on-seeing-karas-play-at-a-bar-in-vienna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/legendsrevealed.com\/entertainment\/2013\/06\/24\/did-carol-reed-hire-anton-karas-to-do-the-soundtrack-of-the-third-man-based-on-seeing-karas-play-at-a-bar-in-vienna\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Carol Reed Hire Anton Karas to do the Soundtrack of The Third Man Based on Seeing Karas Play at a Bar in Vienna?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about movies and whether they are true or false. Click here<\/a> to view an archive of the movie urban legends featured so far.<\/p>\n

MOVIE URBAN LEGEND<\/span><\/u>: Carol Reed hired Anton Karas to do the soundtrack of The Third Man based on seeing him play at a bar in Vienna. <\/p>\n

To start with, we can pretty safely debunk one of the major stories of how Anton Karas got the gig of doing the soundtrack for the Third Man.<\/p>\n

An old story was that the director of the film, Carol Reed, came upon Karas at a bar in Vienna while filming the movie (which is, naturally, set in Vienna) and hired him on the spot to do a song for the soundtrack and once he did the one song, Reed asked him to do more and thus, a star was born (here’s Karas below with his unique musical instrument, the zither)!!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

That’s false.<\/p>\n

It’s pretty clear from various histories of Reed, Karas and the film itself that Reed first hired Karas to do a song for the soundtrack after Karas was playing his zither at a production party for The Third Man in London, well after the conclusion of the filming in Vienna.<\/p>\n

Otherwise, the story is similar – Reed hired Karas to do A song and quickly decided that he wanted Karas to score the entire film (for quite a lot more money than Karas was making at the time playing his zither to entertain bar patrons in Vienna). This was a major endeavor for Karas, who was almost entirely a performer and not a writer of music. So now he had to suddenly score an entire film! The story of Karas living in London with Reed for three months as Karas worked 12-15 hours a day on the film is truly remarkable – and it’s almost like the film Boxing Helena, in that Reed literally would not let Karas leave!! Karas wanted to take a trip back to Vienna, but Reed would not allow it!<\/p>\n

But it all paid off when both…<\/p>\n

A. The film was released and was a big hit…<\/p>\n

\"\"